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Paleontology

This foot and deadly sickle claw once belonged to Utahraptor, cousin to Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame. Scientists believe Utahraptors used this hooked claw to slice open prey, causing death or serious injury. In the 1990’s, several bones from this ferocious predator were discovered near Arches National Park about the time the first Jurassic Park hit movie theaters.

June ­15, 2015 ­– For more than 30 million years after dinosaurs first appeared, they remained inexplicably rare near the equator, where only a few small-bodied meat-eating dinosaurs eked out a living. The age-long absence of big plant-eaters at low latitudes is one of the great, unanswered questions about the rise of the dinosaurs.